Purple curtains fringed with gold
Looped in many a wind-swung fold;”
and, when a little older his fancy dwelt upon the adventures of Chalkley—as
“Following my plough by Merrimac’s green shore
His simple record I have pondered o’er
With deep and quiet joy.”
In these reveries, “The Barefoot Boy” and others, thousands of his countrymen have lived over their lives again. Every thing he wrote, to the New Englander has a sweet, warm familiar life about it. To them his writings are familiar photographs, but they are also treasury houses of facts over which the future antiquarian will pour and gather all the close details of the phase of civilization that they give.
The old Whittier homestead at Amesbury is now in charge of Mrs. Pickard, a [♦]niece of the poet. She has recently made certain changes in the house; but this has been done so wisely and cautiously that if the place some day becomes a shrine—as it doubtless will—the restoration of the old estate will be a simple matter. The library is left quite undisturbed, just as it was when Whittier died.
[♦] ‘neice’ replaced with ‘niece’